I for one am happy they didn’t twist the original game into the bullshit that bedrock edition has become.

I assume you’re referring to stuff like Tarkov or Star Citizen?

These games basically work the same as live service games, except they pretend to be “in development”.

But I’d hardly call it a boom. There’s only a couple truly big money makers, the rest are grifts that don’t really go anywhere, but might have small vocal cult-like fanbases.

Then there are games that really do use the “Early Access” model to fund getting the game made. It’s not really like kickstarter, or preordering, because you do get something in exchange for your money, immediately. And you can look up reviews and videos and see exactly what you are getting. People don’t buy early access games just to wait a couple years to play them. They buy them to play them right now.

And it has brought us games like Satisfactory, DRG, Hades, Subnautica, Everspace…

Even Baldurs Gate 3 was an Early Access title. You could buy and play it for YEARS before “1.0” dropped and became the explosive success it is today.

Those games got made because they were able to sell copies to fund their development throughout the process. And instead of trying to please clueless investors, they had to please the players.

I don’t really see why you’d be salty about this part of the trend. Obviously some stuff is not worth buying, but that’s true whether a game is finished or not.

It both wont ever happen, and has already happened.

ET only had the impact it had because the industry was small. Relatively speaking.

Today, production (both indie and AAA tbh) is diverse enough, that no one game could ever taint the whole industry to that extent again.

What we are seeing, instead, is more and more people who resolve “I’m never giving ubisoft/blizzard/EA/a gacha/a mobile game my money again” but still buy and play games. They just start getting more and more invested in what kinds of industry practices they want to discourage/encourage.

As an example, pre-ordering, while still something people do, is now pretty much universally understood to be a bad idea. No Mans Sky and Fallout 76 were such massive phenomenon, merely mentioning one or the other is a complete comeback to anyone trying to tell you pre-ordering something is a good idea.

Sure, NMS became a good game, eventually, but that didn’t retroactively make pre-ordering it a good move when it only became worth buying 12 months after launch.

Another great example, is Suicide Squad. People were interested, right up until it was revealed it was a live service game. Hype fell off a cliff, and nothing WB did could have brough it back. It wasn’t what fans of the Arkham games wanted. People passed it by before it even launched.

…

Concord.

Couldn’t you just use any wireless mouse? It’s not like the deck is limited to only controllers.

Or is the idea that you want the left controller for movement, rather than using the left controls on the deck or a full controller?

That said, I’m sceptical that the joycon mouse experience is any good on surfaces other than a table. Or even then, considering the ergonomics of the thing when used as a mouse.

Even if the sensor in it is a good one, it’s going to be bluetooth, and bluetooth mice have always had painfully noticeable latency in my experience.

Neat, it’ll support the adaptive trigger features from PS when playing with a DS5.

Lot of games do that now.

Download mode is definitely not a thing yet.

One of the things that’s a bother with the deck is having to leave it on and probably on the charger, if you want to install a couple hundred gigs of games.

Once that’s done, updates don’t take long on my connection so they haven’t been a problem.

But even better if they can pull off a mode where it can do updates while near-sleeping.

Yes.

And yes. The cables don’t come with the GPU. 5$ more for every new PSU made is not a drop in the bucket.

And I don’t think you realize how thick, cumbersome, and stiff, two sole conductors that can do 500W at 12V would be.

The only reason mains power cables are so thin, is because they operate at 120-240V, allowing the amps (and the stress on the cable) to be fairly low. (It being AC also helps, the problem is WORSE with DC)

To do 500W at 12V, you need truly massive cables. And it gets exponentially bigger the more these cards pull.

In fact, the XT60 would not be enough. It can handle bursts of the 700 watts a 5090 can pull, but to deal with the fact that these GPUs pull that continuously, you need to go all the way up to an XT120.

No. But you can get away with less material if you do.

The amount of copper required to carry 500 watts over 12 connectors is a lot less than 500 watts over two connectors.

XT connectors are designed for two big conductors.

But you actually end up needing a lot more copper than you do when using several smaller wires, to carry the same current.

Large wires are also a lot less flexible.

ATX connectors have been fit for purpose for decades. It’s only this latest addition that seems to push things too far.

Yes, it should be safe to force a shutdown, and then re-doing the re-image.

That’s nice.

Even for the rest of us, I think it’s just good for a person to experience other versions of “me”.

I’m a white dude, but games can give me hints about what’s it like to be someone else, and it doesn’t have to match my reality in any way whatsoever. Even more than books, games immerse me into the perspectives of others.

Again. I know.

That’s why I’m hoping steam would make their own thing that’ll just always be there for linux users.

In desktop mode, on the desktop client, outside big picture mode?

I want this on my desktop, and not just in big picture mode. I already know it can be done on the deck.

I wish I could have protondb badges inside the desktop steam client.

Would be nice if this worked with linux in general.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

The device isn’t going to cease to exist, just because it was only for sale for two months.

Yes, exactly. Getting it repaired (both within and outside of warranty) and spare parts availability.

What do you mean, “exactly”? The vast majority of owners will not need to repair theirs, and the vast majority of units will outlive their owners interest in using them. You’re assuming you’ll be one of the exceptions, which is always a possibility, but you can’t factor it in as if it’s a 100% chance.

Software eventually too, but usually that takes a while longer.

What do you mean? It’s an x86 PC. The same way I can grab a 15-year-old laptop and slap a linux distro on it, the same thing is possible with the Deck.

Would you have bought a Steam Deck if Valve would stop producing them after 3 years? I wouldn’t.

I would and I did. In fact every person who has bought one before today, technically did. That’s a million points of contest against the argument you’re trying to make with this. Are you seeing the catch 22 you’re asking your tech to adhere to?

I’d have bought a Deck even if it only lasted a few months, because I got one two months after launch on pre-reservation.

And why not? It’s a great device that is worth the price of admission, as-is. It runs games right now that I will still want to play years from now, and is durable enough to last that long. I do not need valve to make several million more, and to keep doing so for several years, for my unit to somehow become worth owning. It is worth that all on its own.

I get wanting companies to do hardware better, but the level of the standard you are claiming you want here, is absurd. The Decks potential for longevity is above and beyond almost any other hardware product in the tech industry right now, with the exception of the framework laptops.

My one unit has given me three years and hundreds of hours of gaming away from home, and will likely give several hundred more before it stops working. When it does, there are a variety of possibilities to get it back to working.

If it had stopped working within warranty, I’d either have gotten a new unit, or my money back. There is no gamble there.

Again, what do you mean “continued”?

The only impact the discontinuation of those devices had on the people who bought them, is that they can’t buy another. Aside from that, they still work. You’re talking as if the end of sale has some kind of significant impact that makes owning the product less worth it, or like the device ceases to exist on that day. But you clearly know otherwise.

If the Deck stops being sold tomorrow, that has zero impact on the one I already have, save for the possible decline in spare parts available.

There are lots of reasons to wait to buy something, but “they might stop selling them” seems more like a reason to get something you want to have sooner, rather than later. So that when sales stop, you have one you can keep.

Fair enough. But that only further confuses me on how you came to the conclusion you did.

Surely it’s enough for a given product to either be worth the price one pays at the time of purchase, or not be. Judge a product for what it is, not what it will be. And in Valves case they’ve shown they won’t arbitrarily take that away at some later date. Your only complaint then seems to be that they don’t always add value with time.

We almost certainly are getting a second controller, but that will in no way take away, nor improve, the value that people who bought and still use the first one got and get out of it.

I can’t really agree with that assesment of Valves past hardware.

Steam Machines were DOA, and anyone that actually bought one from one of the manufacturers likely got one that came with windows installed, because valve delayed the controller and software for so long the manufacturers pivoted to putting windows on them to be able to start selling the inventory. That meant very few that actually run SteamOS made it into the wild, most of them getting sold as just console-sized windows PCs.

And if you still have one, it’s just a PC. You can slap Bazzite or Windows on it and it’ll work just fine even today.

Both steam controller and link continue to get software support, and also function to this day. Valve stopped manufacturing and selling them, but support has not stopped.

No matter how you look at it, buying valve hardware has meant that even as it ages, they make sure it doesn’t turn into a brick, or even have its usefulness compromised.

Same goes for the Deck, Valve couldn’t brick the thing if they tried. When you buy one, you will still have what came in the box ten years from now.